Design Doc Discussion Thread - Everybody Please Read And Comment

[The Joker]

Ok, I'm done. At least with as much as I could think of.

So I'm posting it in this new thread. Now the discussion should begin. Everybody please read this, and if there is anything you disagree with then write it here. That way we should (and have to) reach agreement at some time. Then an edited version of the Design Doc can be published at our website (to replace the "Features" page). It should include links under each category to the appropriate models, if those have been created.

After that the Doc should be more or less final. Not that it can never be changed by that point, but by then changes should be considered carefully and have a good reason. And if they are being made they will be made in the Doc as well.

And when we have a final version we should ask new people joining the team to read it, and try to have their ideas work with it, or else explain to us what they think should be changed and why. That will ease new members' first time with us, and will make sure that the same things will be discussed over and over again.

Anything else? No, don't think so.

So let's have it! And let the discussion begin!

------------------
"Life is a lesson. You learn it when you're through."
- Limp Bizkit

GGS Website

[The Joker]

Design Doc

Game Philosophy

Our game philosophy is to create something more than a mere civ clone. GGS should be a historical simulation as well as being a turn based strategy game.

The game will be a multiplayer game as well as a single player one. We are starting with the multiplayer part, while developing the game, since single player will require a great AI, and such can not be created untill the game is further developed. As of now we are not sure how many players a multiplayer game can support, but we are hoping for as many as possible, while still keeping the complexity of the game algorithms intact. An ultimate goal could be to have 100s of players play the same game simultaneously for months. In such a game players would come and go, civilizations would rise and fall etc. It would be virtual history being made!

The game is going to be as realistic as possible. Our philosophy here is, that reality is fun. Ruling a country through history would be fun. So the game tryes to copy that. This will mean that the game will have previously unseen levels of realism. Of cause we can not be realistic in all aspects. There are areas where gameplay will have to be more important than realism. In those areas we will then have to consider the two carefully.


Role of the player

An always dificult thing in empire building games spanning 100s or 1000s of years is the role of the player, since no person can live that long. This is especially an issue in GGS, since the player is not in complete control of his civ.

So we decided that the player would be the ”government of the civ”, whoever that is. This would mean that the player would have to work under very different government types, and would have to adjust his policy to fit this. At the same time the player will only have the same level as control as the government would have. This would obviously vary from government to government. If the player runs a military dictatorship he would have more control and elbowroom than a leader of a democratic government, but at the same time there would be penalties to the dictatorship. For examble the player would have to supress revolutionary tendencies at all times.


Turn system

The game is going to be turnbased. We are not, however, going to use the old fascioned turn system from Civ2. In stead we are using a preplanned turn system. This means, that the turns will roughly be divided into two phases: the planning phase and the execution phase. The planning phase is where the player is active. He moves his units, he manages his provinces and everything else. The point is, that all players will do this simultaneously. Only nothing really takes place in this phace. The world would be ”on pause”, so player can manage his things in peace. Units would therefore not be moved at all in this phase. In stead you would choose, where they should go, who they should attack etc, and there would be symbols describing the orders that you have given – a line through the hexes the unit would move to, a line and an attack symbol at the unit it should attack, and so forth.

When the player has done all his planning he would hit the ”end turn” button. When all players have done this the execution of the turn will begin.

Here all units will move simultaneously. Fast units would move faster, slow units slower. The player would have very limited control in this phase, as the world would just glide forward in a realtime mode. This means that the player would give some fairly general orders to his units in the planning phase – what to do if they encounter an enemy units, whether his units should chase the enemy if it flees etc.

This preplanned turn system not only means more equal conditions for all players – for instance there would be no more huge advantages from starting a war – it also makes it possible to have many more players in the game, compared to old fashioned turns, since all players do their moves simultaneously and not one after another. The AIs could plan their moves simultaneously with the player, which would mean less waiting for your turn time. The same thing in huge multiplayer games.


Map

We are using our own map. It will have hexagonal shaped tiles, since they provide more realistic movement than squares. The hex width would be 20 km (or 50, not sure here). On an earth sized map this would give about 1.4 million (or 340,000) hexes.

We are also going to have many more terrain types than Civ2. There could be different elevations, and different temperature of the traditional terrain types. There will propably be up to 256 different terrain types.


Units and movement

One of our goals for the game is to reduce micromanagement. One of the most annoying things in Civ2 was to move sometimes hundreds of units one by one, one tile at a time. The fact that GGS is going to use maps that are way larger than anything seen in Civ2, and that we will try to make unit movement much larger and realistic means that the tile by tile movement is just not an option. In stead units are combined into armies, which would consist of several units. To make the player use the armies large groups of units would recieve bonuses when fighting against small ones (again realistic). The armies would mean that the player would propably never have to move than 10 armies per turn, even in wartime. In peace periods it would be much less.

We are also making the whole movement of units mousebased (like the rest of the game). All movement should be done via a simple left click/right click system, as seen in realtime strategy games.

The game will also have two types of movement ranges for units – deployment range and operating range. The deployment range is the area within which the unit could be moved to within one turn. The movement could include an attack on an enemy unit or something else, but would take the whole turn. The operating range will be the area in which the unit could just move around freely. If the army has sufficient scouting the whole actiong range could be visible, and enemy units entering the range could be intercepted. So the unit could be set to guard the whole area within the operating range. Furthermore the unit could move around within the operating range freely. There would be a limit of cause, but it would be high, and would often not be reached.


Regions

The regions in GGS will pretty much take the cities’ place in GGS as the basic economical and political entity. Provinces is where ressources are pooled, politics are done and things are built. It is also where revolts or riots will happen. This means that the regions will be a lot like cities were in Civ. The reason we have done this is partly to eliminate the odd and realistic 21 tile ressource system of Civ. In reality lots of cities can lie within a small area. In modern times cities lie right next to each other. But to manage all the cities this would bring would not be much fun. That would mean managing 100s of cities and therefore way, way too much micromanagement. This is why we are using regions in stead. In modern times there would usually be lots of cities in each region. This drastically reduces the amount of entities that the player will have to manage. Even the largest city would never have more than 30-40 regions. Most larger civs will have only 5-20 regions.

The regions will be completely defined by the player, and be changed as the player sees fit. The main limit here would be, that a region could never be spanned on two landmasses divided by over 1 (or 2) hexes of water. There would also, however, be a max distance (distance would be in movement points, so dificult terrained hexes like mountains would mean more “distance” than easy terraines ones like grassland. Furthermore transportation infrastructure would reduce the distance) a hex in the region could have to the region capital. Beyond this there would be a at first small, but increasing penalty the further away the hex is. This max distance would depend on the technology level. At the very beginning of a game a region may not be bigger than just 1, or a few hexes. In the end of the game a region could be several hundred hexes.

Each province would also need to have a certain percentage of its population as administdra-tors. This percentage would go up the more provinces the civ has, but tech levels would reduce the amount needed. The capital province would need a larger percentage than the other provinces. If the percentage is lower there would be penalties.

Each region could have its own relationship with the mother civ. Many regions would be normal, integrated parts of the civ with the normal rights and obligations. But some could be more or less independant, could have its own military and control itself, and perhabs just have to pay some tax to the mother civ. There would be several degrees of this. Another version could be a colony, where the mother civ would have more direct control, and in a democracy would be given more free hands in regional matters there. On the other hand the people in such a region would not be very fond of this, and therefore a rather large military force would have to be garrisoned in the region just to avoid revolts. A third form would be occupied territory. This would mean that the “region” (not that it would be a real region) would give nearly no ressources to the player, and that the regions economy would be severely hurt. On top of this the people in occupied territory would most likely revolt at any chance they would get. So a very, very large military force would have to be present. Occupied territory would be for land that you have just conquored, and that you therefore have to give your military totally free hands to fight down any uprest. Usually occupied territory would only stay that way for a few turns.


Population

The goal of the game in this area is to make it as much like reality as possible. Therefore the game will have a real population, in stead of the “heads” from Civ. We are also going to use age groups, mortalities, birth rates and other advanced stuff, to make it all work as the real world does. The mortalities will be determined by the technology level, food per capita, and by the seperately handled disease model. Birth rates will be determined by education levels, cultural things and more. Population will, apart from diseases, be handled on a regional basis. So the hexes will only store the amount of people on them. The regional population will be the combined populations of all the region’s hexes, and everything else will be handled on a regional level.


Economy

Here, as with population, we are aiming for realism. This is why the whole economy runs on its own via an advanced system, where people demand goods depending on their income, and each good has a price calculated from supply and demand. The entire economy is to a large extend based on real economic theory. This also means that the player can have pretty much the amount of involvement he wants. If we doesn’t like to mingle around with it he can just set a tax rate to have it match his expences. If he likes economy he can do pretty much as much as he wants, including a progressional tax rate, sales tax or tariffs. The players role in the economy will be that of the government in reality. The player can choose any economic system he wants, all with their unique effects.


Combat

The combat system will be both realistis and entertaining. To encourage people to use armies (which will be reducing micromanagement) large groups of units will get bonuses over small ones. Armies will, however, require consideration. Using different types of units will be required, on top of handling scouting, supply routes and more. And at the same time guirella warfare has to be implemented as well.


Infrastructure and improvements

GGS will not have improvements like Civ. It just wouldn’t fit with a real population and a real economy to build a generic library. In stead the player just decides how much money and ressources to use, and on what. This can be done region per region, but just as well on a national level. So if he wants more scientific progress he can increase the amount of money spent on research. The fact that there is only a few expences to take care of reduces the amount of work having to be put into this dramatically. Especcially since it would often be done at a national level. It may seem dull to only decide to increase military spending by 10% in stead of building barracks. And indeed this part of the game might not be as much fun as in Civ. But our goal here is more to have it require much less time from the player. It would still be important, but the player should be able to decide his overall strategy, and then follow that in a very short amount of time. This will free time for other, funnier tasks. So the whole local ressource management would be a much smaller part of GGS than Civ.

Infrastructure, like roads and railroads, should propably be handled in a similar way. Having to build roads on every single hex is not at all fun. So in stead this would be handled by allocating money for infrastructure on your budget (in a region or nationally), which will get it built automatically. Besides this you could order specific improvements built on specific hexes. So you could drag a road between your region capitals, or from a region capital to the sea, for easier, cheaper and faster unit movement and to increase interprovincial trade. Fortifications will also have to be player built, and would mostly be placed where there are cities, to protect them, or in lines at the border of a powerful and aggressive enemy.


Cities

Although cities wont have the economical and political importance it had in Civ, they are still being distinguished from the rural hexes. They have to be different, since they are where industrical production and trade takes place. Their population will also have to be handled specially, since cities untill the 20th century actually had a constantly higher mortality than birth rate. So the city needed constant immigration to survive. And if the city stopped being the political and economical center people would stop migrating there, as shown in history. This should be modelled in the game as well. Cities would develop on themselves. The player could order a city built on a hex, but if people didn’t want to move to it it would die out. But on region capitals there would almost always be a city. If it wasn’t a city when the hex was selected capital the migration would almost always make sure it would become one.


The Rise And Fall Of The Great Powers

To make the game fun from beginning to end and to keep the historical accuracy high we want to implement the at Apolyton well known rise and fall idea. The concept is, that where in Civ a civ was large and powerful it would just stay that way. But this is in fact neither realistic nor very fun. History has shown that a civ once strong will always be surpassed by other civs at some point. And a game that is more or less decided by 1000 AD is much less fun than one that will stay thrilling from beginning to end. So in GGS civs will rise and fall. This also makes huge, long multiplayer gasmes possible, where players can come and go, and the ones that was in the game first would not automatically end up being the most powerful ones.

The rise and fall idea is in fact a difficult one to implement. And we are not yet sure excactly how to do it. The key is to make game algorithms that makes an empire weaker, the larger it gets, just as there is algorithms that makes an empire stronger, the larger it gets. But these has to work in different areas of the game, and have different scopes. So when an empire grows it could get stronger in some areas and weaker in others.

The areas that civs will weaken in with increased size are propably going to be by needing more administrators, making this an increasing expence, and thus hurting the empires economy, to require more troops around the civ to stay strong, thereby also hurting the economy, suffering from more corruption, making it less efficient and less flexible, and making it a victim of more nationalist strif, which should be huge in a very large civ.

If the civ has based its size on mere conquest these weakening factors should be even more devastating.


Social Model And Nationalities

An important aspect of the game will be the relationship with the people. Some of this will be through the social model, which would handle different nationalities. The concept here is, that people are not generric. Different nationalities exist, and this should be modelled in the game. So if you just conquor other civs without thought you would have a large amount of hostile foreigners in your civ, who would revolt at any chance they get, unless you treat them very, very nice, or you have an enormeous military force to keep them down. In the long run an empire solely based on conquest would never last.

Another thing would be, that even a part of your own people could develop their own nationality. This would especially be so in a far away colony. In a longer run this too could create huge problems, and could very well force the player to give up the colony.


Religions

Besides the nationalities people would also have different religious affiliations. Having different religions in a region or in a civ would give problems. The people would often not get along very well. Besides this the religion would also be classes of their own (see Politics), and would work like so with their own agenda and power. On top of this religions would be governed globally, by a central religious center, that would control the religion class of that religion in all the countries in the world. This would give a religion with a lot of believers enormeous power, and could let it virtually control a lot of civs. If you upset a religion you upset its believers. So if 90% of your population worship one religion you better not upset that religion. This could some times let the religion dictate your policy more or less.

Of cause the player would also have some effect on religions. He could support or forbid certain religions, which would have some effect on their popularity. Or he could make a grand scale inquisition, by killing believers of a religion.

Religions would rise and fall like the civs. There would be stats for each religion, determining its ability to convince people to believe in it. This means that religions would start by a guy preachin in just one region, and afterwards it might die out emidiately, or it could spread to sorrounding regions via trade, migration etc. The player would not know the stats, so he could only try to figure them out from the religions succes or lack thereof. A religion would also have cultural effects, that could in fact effect people’s preferences and other things.


Politics

You will not just rule your civ because you feel like it. Ruling means that you need the support of someone and you will not just do as you please. In stead you will be subjective to your people. To model this we have a system with social classes - workers, capitalists, nobility, intelligentsia, military etc - that combat for power of the civ. Your task is to get the support from some, by being nice to them and doing what they want you to. Each class would have an agenda. The militarys would be many military units, the intelligentsias would be research, and humane policies, the capitalists would be free trade and as little a public sector as possible. So support those who fit your policy, and they will support you, and suppress the rest. Whether you run a military controlled police state or a friendly democracy is up to you - and the social classes. Cause you will not be in total control of what you choose. There will be revolutions, where you have to pick a side, or the class you base your power on may demand that you go to war with an enemy, even if you don’t want to! Refuse and you send your civ into a destructive civil war, accept and you will be getting a war that you may not be interested in. Even foreign powers could play the game in your civ. They could support a class suppressed by you, give it money and equipment to make it stronger and possibly revolt against you. Either just to annoy you and weaken you and let them conquor the leftovers, or they could have an agreement with the class, that if it gets to power they will have some influence on your civs policy.

The political thing should indeed be one of the most important and most fun aspects of GGS, and would be something quite unique to our game.


Characters

To give some more flavour to the game characters will be included. They will be commanders of your armies, leaders of the social classes, advisors and regional governors, or just important people. Each will have some characteristics, which gives bonuses (or penalties) to the things they do - a commander could increase the morale of his army, or give it an attack bonus or something, depending on his characteristics. Each character will also have an agenda, which will usually include as much power as possible to them, or to help its civ to greatness. For most characters (like an advisor or a commander or a regional governor) the agenda will not be that important to you. But very talented characters will actively follow their agenda, and their talent will make it possible for them to achieve it.So putting a really brilliant commander in charge of your biggest army is likely to let you defeat your enemies, but the possibility for him to march towards your capital with his army and demand that you install a military dictatorship will also be large. If you accept that you would stay in power, but you will now be in power supported by the military, and this propably mean you will have to go to war, and pretty much do what they tell you to do. If you don’t accept it you will end up fighting your own army, leaded by this brilliant commander.

So the characters are going to have an effect on the game, and a game would see the rise of great characters, that would drastically shape the history of the game.


Diseases

Since diseases have played such an immense role in human history they too will be implemen-ted. A disease would start out at a single hex, and would spread to nearby hexes or via trade routes. The rate at which it spreads, its mortality, its cureability and its incubation time will be determined by some stats, unique to the disease. This will give each disease its own life and characteristics. Diseases could be cured, depending on the technology level and on the diseases cureability level. When a disease has been on a hex for some time the people on it would achieve immunity towards it, which would mean that it would simply kill a very small percen-tage of the population per turn. If the disease then came in contact with people not previously exposed to it, however, it would become an epidemic once more.


Technology

Honestly? I can’t really say much about how technology will be done, since I honestly don’t know.


Alternative playing styles

Every turn in the game will be one year. This means that a full game, from prehistoric times to science fiction, will take a very long time. And via the internet this could mean having huge, online games lasting for months and months, where players come and go, civs rise and fall. History is made. But not all players will want to play this long. Therefore it should be possible to play shorter games abourt certain historical periods. Imagine jumping into the world of 1938. War is virtually inevitable. But how will it go? It will be up to you. All eras and events could be played - the age of the European expansion, the American civil war, the Roman empire. The possibilities are endless, making GGS several games in one
When this is said it also have to at one point become possible to play a full game, from prehistory to science fiction, in a shorter amount of time. We are not yet sure how to do this, but the game should be as flexible as possible. So hopefully it will be possible to play a full game, taking only general decisions, in just some hours. Or some days. Or months. Depending on the players preferences.

Another option, which would take some more time to develop, would be for the player to be a character. This would call for serious internal strife, since there would be several players per civ. Players could make alliances with other players as they battle for power, at the same time as combatting other civs, working under the same rules. The player could be a commander running only an army, a governer running his province, but be subjective to the central government, perhabs run by a parliament consisting of all the players in a civ, where votes on large issues are taken, and who have elected a president to handle the daily business, that could remove him of power. But the players would all be able to do what they wanted. So if a commander has done bad, and the government wants to set him free, and he didn’t want this, he could just stay commanding his army (if his troops morale was high enough), and not give up without a fight. There could be huge civil wars, where factions consisting of some players each battle for power of the civ. Having more than one civ would just make the whole thing even harder and more fun!

Imagine playing a Roman civil war scenarion. Caesar, Marc Anthony, Cicero, Cleopatra. All fighting for power. Plus the players of barbaric tribes could take advantage of the strife.

Another game type would be for a player to play as a corporation or as a religion. This too will take some time, since we will have to find some interesting things for such players to do. But it could be a really fun game to play as a corporation, playing countries up against each other simple to maximize your own profit and power.

------------------
"Life is a lesson. You learn it when you're through."
- Limp Bizkit

GGS Website

[Leland]

Exactly what I've been looking for. Havne't had time to read all of the threads yet, and this sort of document that sums everything up is definitely useful to lurkers and wanna-be developers like myself.


Game Philosophy:

Should the multipart nature of the game be emphasized even more explicitly? As it has been said before, it's not possible to have "multiplayer game as well as a single player one" because tradeoffs are inevitable.

Sure "reality is fun" but it's also intuitive and it makes the game more immersive. Which is just another way of putting it, I guess.


Role of the player

This has probably been discussed in length so I'll excuse myself for bringing it up again, but is micromanagement really made impossible? I'd like to at least have an option of drilling down to more detailed control. especially when the game is still in development you'll be likely to have incomplete AIs which force the testers to roll up their sleeves and operate nuts and bolts of the system, and I don't think it's very sensible to leave this option out from the final product. The player should rather have good enough AI to take care of those things, and the game mechanics should ensure that there is no advantage to be gained by micromanagement, except maybe the personal pleasure of taking care of your favourite city or fine-tuning battle tactics just for the hell of it.


Turn system

quote: Originally posted by The Joker on 12-30-2000 06:50 PM Here all units will move simultaneously. Fast units would move faster, slow units slower. The player would have very limited control in this phase, as the world would just glide forward in a realtime mode.

What's the rationale behind having a "realtime mode"? Shouldn't the server just calculate the moves and then send the results to clients, who can replay them with any speed they want, or skip straight to the next planning phase? Or is this exactly what was meant by realtime (if so, it should be more explicit)?


Map

quote: The hex width would be 20 km (or 50, not sure here). On an earth sized map this would give about 1.4 million (or 340,000) hexes.

Hmm... why is the choice between 20 and 50? Why not 25, 30 or 40? 20 km sounds pretty small... there are larger cities and wider rivers than that. But it's better than fifty, if your aim is ultimate realism.

Teh number of different terrain types is irrelevant in a document of this level of abstraction. It's an implementation issue, if you ask me. Also, terrain types shouldn't be just shrugged off as such, after all they are a combination of geological, climatic and man-made properties. (Is this issue settled already?)

I'd like the map to be able to have different kinds of metrics. In multiplayer games realism should be tweaked if the players want a different kind of experience, and I can imagine some scenarios where you would want a heterogenous terrain without boundaries (like the poles in Civ and SMAC).


Units and movement

Nothing to add here, bravo!


Regions

A nitpick: to make the document more readable for newcomers you may want to put the definition of region in the first paragraph, and only then explain their significance in the game.

Very thorough descrittion of this regional approach... I might learn to like it in the long run. Only thing I'm nto quite clear is, how does the player exactly define the regions? just draws lines on the map, yes? That could be convenient in some case, when you want to make clear distinctions, but what happened to the idea of letting cities (or fortifications or other permanent settlements) define the boundaries and area of regions? Player chooses the cities he wants included in the region, and the game determines the land area under the influence of those cities. Opinions?

Is it possible to have a civilization without any land to rule? I believe that a system where nomadic tribes and refugees are inherently possible is better than something which has to use different rules for start-up civs. So maybe there could be some "virtual" regions that apply to people who are not living in any reagion you control?


Population

quote: The regional population will be the combined populations of all the region’s hexes, and everything else will be handled on a regional level.

I strongly disagree with this. Populations are managed inderectly and regions directly by the player, this will lead to some pretty big holes in the system. Mark my words. This belongs to another thread, but I suggest that populations are handled wholly separate from regions. This could be achived by assigning a "mock region" for each population and using that to calculate the population properties. Regional populations would be determined via statistical methods.


Economy

A little bit short... how about explaining some basic units and concept of the game economy here?


Combat

Some people such as me find combat extremely tedious no matter how well it's implemented. Once you get a decent AI, military actions should be possible to be delegated to it.


Infrastructure and improvements

quote: It may seem dull to only decide to increase military spending by 10% in stead of building barracks. And indeed this part of the game might not be as much fun as in Civ. But our goal here is more to have it require much less time from the player. It would still be important, but the player should be able to decide his overall strategy, and then follow that in a very short amount of time. This will free time for other, funnier tasks. So the whole local ressource management would be a much smaller part of GGS than Civ.

Actually, you could make the increasing of military spending as interesting as building barracks if the advisors or governors present the option to the player in concrete terms. "Your Majesty, I beg you to give us 10% so we can enhance our military prowess and improve the deteriorating morale of the people!" or "A war is coming, shall we preparare ourselves?". Just a matter of creative UI.

quote: Besides this you could order specific improvements built on specific hexes. So you could drag a road between your region capitals, or from a region capital to the sea, for easier, cheaper and faster unit movement and to increase interprovincial trade. Fortifications will also have to be player built, and would mostly be placed where there are cities, to protect them, or in lines at the border of a powerful and aggressive enemy.

I see, player can micromange stuff if he wants after all. Makes my previous comment kind of void.


Cities

Good.


The Rise And Fall Of The Great Powers

Even better!


Social Model And Nationalities

Don't forget that nationalitites also tend to grow closer when they are forced to live together. This should make the nationalities more manageable. Some considerations should also be given (as you certainly have, I've probably just missed those ideas)to the relationship between nationalities and civilizations.


Religions

At a glance religions seem to be very close to nationalities... programmers, is it possible to have a generic class or a class structure to model both of them? And maybe diseases too... these three things need to have a treelike evolving data structure where relationships and affiliations could be analyzed somehow.

Religions having agendas... sounds intriguing, but I think this should rather manifest in preferences of the followers than as any high level strategies for world domination. Hmm... I might be interested in writing a religion model, if no one has done it yet... but time is such a scarce resource... darn. these features probably won't be implemented anytime soon, so if you can wait for a few months I might cough up something. Or just comment the work of anyone else wanting to do this.

Of cause the player would also have some effect on religions. He could support or forbid certain religions, which would have some effect on their popularity. Or he could make a grand scale inquisition, by killing believers of a religion.

quote: Religions would rise and fall like the civs.

Not so. Religions are quite different from civs, first of all the absence of competition would probably not stagnate a religion. History shows that some religions have been able to hold their position for millenia (roman catholicism, islam) without signs of falling. It's more likely that they'd just evolve when the society around them changes, but otherwise I'd say religions are pretty stable when left alone.


Politics

Great!


Characters

Nooooooooooo!

Having characters is not something I'd expect from this game after reading all that stuff about realism and history and rise and fall. On the other hand the tendency is away from micromanagement, but then you throw in individual people! If that's not micromanagement, I don't know what is. Furthermore, history is not made by people. Sure, some may happen to be in the right place at the right time, but I prefer to see those incidents more as triggering events that decide the course of history, people's personal agendas and stats have little to do with it.

Social phenomena could be illustrated via characters by the user interface. That's all. Discuss.


Diseases

I suppose youv'e got this figured out, though I'm personally not very interested in disease modelling. Good work, whoever has been working on those models though.


Technology

(I better check the old threads if there is anything about this before engaging my maniacal rants again.)


Alternative playing styles

quote: Another option, which would take some more time to develop, would be for the player to be a character. This would call for serious internal strife, since there would be several players per civ. Players could make alliances with other players as they battle for power, at the same time as combatting other civs, working under the same rules.

My personal gripe with characters aside, this would make the scope of the game a little bit too large to handle. In effect the multiplayer game would be kind of a virtual world where different people would mess things up. If you put human players as generals or other characters, they have different reasoning that Ai generals would; as a result your civ would no longer behave like a realistic civilization would. On the other hand, implementing characters like this is more plausible than writing AIs for the single player game; I just find it too complicated and not worth the trouble.

Any thoughts?

Other

Even though the game is predominantly multiplayer, there was hardly anything about the mechanics of the multiplayer game. How will the players hop in and out of the game? How will they interact? How are turns handled in multiplayer game? What are the objectives of multiplayer games? Are there any rules, or is it like more like a history toy? Adding a "Multiplayer" chapter might be in order.

Anything I didn't comment I am happy about, so congratulations for a job well done!




[This message has been edited by Leland (edited December 30, 2000).]

[Leland]

Some other thigns the design doc should include:

Ecology
(or this could be included in terrain; in any case something should be said about climate changes and natural disasters and the effect players have to the world)

Disasters
(in lack of a better word, "disasters" should be used to describe unpredictable, random events that occur throughout history. Disasters could also be positive, so perhaps the word really is misleading. "Paradigm shift", "bifurcation" or "chaotic events" sounds better, what do you guys think?)

Culture
(or more specificly, cultural evolution. This would be the concept binding nationalities, religions, tehnology and politics together and as such shoudl deserve a chapter. In the game the cultural evolution models should take into account relationship between different ideas or "memes", may they be religions or ideologies, diffusion, paradigm shifts, megatrends... )

Project plan
(some basic ideas how the project is managed should also be discussed. For instance, what is a model as opposed to design, what's the relationship between gaem design, architectural design and programming, how are documents/ideas/source codes managed, how can you contribute, what does open source mean, schedules... that sort of things. I agree that this particular document should not extensively cover all these issues, but some general guidelines should be established and links to appropriate documents added when they are ready.)

Anyone care to comment these?

[cavebear]

I have only a few basic questions concerning the actions of the game as described in the design doc...

1. Will there be specific domesticated plants and animals?

2. Will domesticated plants and animals be related to the disease and/or economy models?

3. Will the human player have any control over domestication?

4. Can you give me examples of the kinds of decisions that the human player can make each turn? In other words, what can *I* actually do while the computer is running the economy, population, disease, religion, and military?

Please don't take this wrong, but it seems to me that I am limited to controlling some sort of expanded "How Shall We Distribute The Wealth" chart from Civ2 while the computer goes merrily along beyond my influence.

Am I just telling the computer to "go attack the French", "trade with the Celts", and "increase food production in Siberia"? And then watching the map change for a few turns?

I can't quite see where the game is.

[ElmoTheElk]

Units and movement

Because we use armies in stead of units, we have to cope with the differnce between the units in an army. For example, a tank can attack more often and move further than riflemen. How do we cope with tat differnce. Do we use the lowest moving rate of a unit in that army?

Characters

I disagree on the way characters are used in Joker's design doc. I'd rather see Leland's ideas used herefor. Charcters are for 1 time events, not to be used like real leaders (like a military leader or something).

Technology

We havn't set this out yet Maybe we should make a new tread for it!

I agree with cavebear that we need to have much more influence than 'increase trade in Siberia' or 'attack the French', but I think we all agree with this, don't we? We must have control over our armies, economy, politics, etc.

'Culture', 'Multiplayer', 'Project plan' and 'Animals and plants' should all be included in the doc.

I haven't read anything yet, but it's a start.
[This message has been edited by ElmoTheElk (edited January 01, 2001).]

[Janes]

Like Cavebear I also am wondering about the domestication part of the game. Personaly I think it should be included. Remember the first half of the Guns, Germs and Steel book was about domestication.

Secondly I am also wondering about the infrastructure option. I wouldn't like to have player control just be the adjusting of percentage scores of spending between science, millitary, etc. If someone wants to just do it simply like that they should have the option but I don't think it would be fun. Of course it wouldn't have to be the same way as Civ2 but you should be able to have more detialed control.

That's just my two bits for now.

[ElmoTheElk]

About Nomad tribes:
I think we should worry about that now, but we may add this feature later on. I like it to, but I don't think we should include it in the design doc now. (With all the basic features descriped.)

About technology:
What DEFINATLY should be there s the idea that civ's can develop there own way of a specific tech. I.e. the math system there're working with. There both have a specific system, but it's different (and the one is better than the other.) Then they could aquire the other system by trade, war or diplomacy, resulting in better communication. This idea was explaned somewhere and it's 1 of the best innovative and creative ideas I have read so far. (Not too well explaned though... )

About plants/animals:
Maybe it is an option to include it in the technology function we have. The tech thing is perfectly capable with handling such systems, as I remember. So I vote for the system as Amjayee descipes above.

[VetLegion]

Joker - nice job. I ll explain what I think about region - city relationship which is the biggest remark I have there.

Elmo - I dont believe in different tech for everyone. I think I read somwhere a system (clash or civ3) where you could invest in your techs differently: so one player might have metal working at 30, while other might have fishing at 64 where bigger number means better level. I like that and I think it gives enough differentiation between civs.

[cavebear]

Amjayee touched on the concern to avoid prejudices and racism, etc. Might it not be useful to have none of the civs be real historical ones? I'm sure I could invent any number of possible civ names, if that would be helpful. I wouldn't want to go through the effort as just "busy work" but I would do that if it would be used.

[amjayee]

Good work, Joker! Enormous job to bring all the basic ideas together, and in such few words. Great! I'm quite happy with everything you said. Though technology system was quite thoroughly described by me in som thread, but perhaps it's so old everyone hasn't read it. I will make a summary of it later.

Leland asked about nomadic tribes and other civs without land. I once presented an idea of "mobile populations"; quite like armies, but they are populations, or cities, that can move around, get its food and resources from the terrain they are on, possibly fight real armies, if they have soldiers with them etc... kinda like real nomad tribes. They would also have some limited civilizstion features.

About what actions the player takes during the turns, micromanagement etc.: there would be several levels of control as stated earlier. Player could just allocate certain amount of money from the national budget to each region, and give some general guidelines of what to do; for example, he could set a government style, ask for providing certain amount of men for his army each year, things like that. Or, he could divide the money for different purposes as he sees fit. Or, he could review the statistics of the regions economics, infrastructure etc. and plan his actions based on those; for example he could decide that the school systems or industrial systems need to be enhanced, he would be told how much more money etc. is needed and so on. But I don't think players would be building improvements or such - it's just impossible for the scale of the game, and also quite unrealistic, and, most of all, tedious. But I don't think anyone needs to be concerned about the lack of things to do. There are way more things besides the economy and infrastructure. We just need to design the system, how those things are done, so that it is fun.

About plants and animals, they will play some part, most propably quite important part in what areas of the world develop and how quickly - just like GGS explains. There will most propably be lots of domestication things (that belong to technology things) and also plants and animals (that belong to map and terrain things), that have strong effect to the economy and other things. Players might have some control in the process, at least in the technology things; but how much and what kind of control is really needed? Isn't it as GGS tells, that all people have always domesticated all the plants they have access to, taking those best suited for it for everyday use? There is quite little for human to do, it just provides the framework and starting conditions for the civilizations. Though we are open for ideas. If you think of some great new feature for the game, share it with us! Though remember we are trying to make this historically accurate, which, I think, is what GGS is about; history as it really was, without prejudices and racism and such.

[VetLegion]

I have mixed the order of questions, but you ll get it:

quote: 4. Can you give me examples of the kinds of decisions that the human player can make each turn? In other words, what can *I* actually do while the computer is running the economy, population, disease, religion, and military?

Good point everybody should ask themselves when writing or commenting a model - I know I am. What is in for the player?

quote: 1. Will there be specific domesticated plants and animals? 2. Will domesticated plants and animals be related to the disease and/or economy models? 3. Will the human player have any control over domestication?

This is/are a set of complex questions. Could player count to get diseases if he gets more domesticated animals? Should we allow diseases to be used as a weapon - consciously? If yes then AI could use them too - it may lead to disease wars. Up to which period in history? We need to define those well.

As for plants - it depends on time span we use. If we go from 8000 BC (makes sence to me) then we would need some plant diffusion algorithms to spread them without influence from player. On the other hand - player can decide what to plant and if some plants are better then others then they become a very expensive one-time trade element (in history this occured in 15 century). For example if you are in swampy area having rice would increase your food production by factor of 10 - you better get rice fast, and you better get it by trade then wait for it to spread here.

The control I think player should have about domestication is by having it be a tech and player can decide how much to invest in it. Tech at 30 is better then one at 20. Then we could multiply it with "animal factor" for example 1 for sheep, 4 for cow to get food production. Something like that - to make it beneficial for player to get bigger animals or invest money in techniques to get more from smaller ones.

quote: Am I just telling the computer to "go attack the French", "trade with the Celts", and "increase food production in Siberia"? And then watching the map change for a few turns? I can't quite see where the game is.

I have played a few games with such decisions (Imperialism) and they are really good. They have a fanatical base of players too. But I dont think we should be only that broad. We should do as much micromanagment as we can and then lock it in different levels. I think this is both good and doable.

An example:
In dealing with population your actions cause their happines level to change. At level one you may only taxate groups, supress them and donate them money. At level two you get to negotiate with them and make deals. At level 3 you get more options yet, and every decision you make has an impact to each group.

[amjayee]

Quite good discussion... about the technology issue; as has been said in some messages, our idea was to have a complex technology network instead of a tree of equally important and generic "packages" that require the same amount of work to invent. Instead there would be scientific fields, that have several levels of knowledge; the higher the level, the better understanding the people have on that field. Also there would be technology, which means application of science; similarly there would be several fields, and a skill level. For example there could a ship building technology, and the skill level decides how good and large ships the people can make, and how quickly, efficiently etc. they can be made. So, as VetLegion said, there would be some domestication and agriculture sciences and technologies.

The unique idea was to have "milestones" in addition to those things presented above. These would be important inventions and breakthrough ideas, like wheel, damasq steel, telephone or evolution of species. They would be much like developments in civ2. Also most military inventions would be like this; for example tank, machine gun, stealth technology, etc. We would have lots of small technologies, and lots of levels for basic sciences, all forming a complex network of technology.

There was also an issue with the technology things; they would need usually some practical work to develop. So, your skill of shipbuilding would rise only if you build ships constantly.

I hope this explains the basic idea, there was much more things we discussed earlier...

[amjayee]

cavebear: I once thought that it would be a great feature, if the world would be completely detached from our world, so it would be clear that the player is making new history and not trying to repeat our world's history. It would be a good idea. Though we need quite lots&lots of civ, region and city names. But in multiplayer games, the players would of course invent their own names, but a database of names would be good for a guideline, and for the lazy players.

[The Joker]

Leland:

Game philosophy:
I think Elmo said it best here. Since a mmp game will require loads of AI no matter what we might as well make sp possible as well.

Role of the player:
Yes, you are right that different levels of micromanagement should be possible. But the mechanics of the game (econ model especcially) should mean that Civ2 type micromanagement of moving around workers should be impossible. In stead the player should have the role of the government. And yes, here he should be allowed to have a more micromanagement like role, if he wanted to.

Turn system:
The "realtime" mode is just what decides what units get where first. So if two armies not at war with each other want to enter the same hex, and the first is much faster than the other, then the first would be allowed to enter it, and the second would not. That sort of things, just to avoid annoying bugs in the system. But the realtime mode would only be inside the server. Clients recieve the final turns and should be able to "rewind" the map, to see how the things happened that turn.

Map:
I think the hex sizes has to be logical. 30 km hexes are just too odd. But after Amjayee's post in the map thread I think that 50 km hexes would propably be best, and then have some maps that were larger than the earth.

The terrain types number is not settled. So we are propably going to have a good discussion ahead of us here! But let's confine it to the map thread.

Regions:
I don't think the importance of ancient cities in particular should be made too large. Ancient cities of often not more than 100,000 inhabitants rarely had an area of influence larger than the 50 km hex they were on. So in other words much of the preindustrial world should be a rural one. And then regions should help defining that world in the player's civ.

Civs without land/nomadic civs should propably be made possible. I don't think they would be at all impossible to model. It would just be a number of people that moved around, and lived on a different hex each turn.

Population:
How would you do that? I mean, we can't have economical, cultural, religious and national issues all done on a hex level. So how would these mock regions be made and used?

Economy:
I have a really good idea how to make a working economy model. You can get a good indication of how it should work in the Econ thread. So the reason I didn't write much about it here is, that I had such a good idea about it, and therefore I did not want to make this more than a small teaser. But I could make it more describtive.

Combat:
Agreed.

Infrastructure and improvements:
Agreed!

Social model and nationalities:
Agree once more.

Religions:
I think the catholic church is a pretty good examble of a religion operating under very strickt control of a central leadership, and with a very clear agenda.

We don't have a religion model as of yet. So you would be more than welcome to write one. But like with many other things religions is low on our priority list at the moment. Other, more basic things has to be made first.

Characters:
Hmm. I don't know. I personally think characters would give pretty cool spice to a game like this. And I think totally neglegting persons in the history of mankind would be a little too marxistisc to be totally accurate. But unlike many other things characters is not one of my "darlings", so if people don't like it I would be totally willing to remove it without much discussion.

Diseases:
Congratulate Heardie. He is our disease master.

Alternative playing styles:
Yeah, I know. I just think it would be a nice dream to have. Obviously such a civ would work pretty weird. But I don't think we should start arguing over this now, since we are millions of lightyears from being able to implement anything like this.

Other:
I guess that is sort of missing. I will start working on some more stuff about the mechanics of mp games. But since we don't have it implemented I think it would be hard to have a completely clear view of how it should work at this point in time.

Other things the DD should include:
Yes, you are right here.


Cavebear:

1: Yes.
2: Yes.
3: Yes, but it will be limited.
4: Move units, negotiate with other players and classes/groups, set incomes and expences, build improvements, make overall strategies on what to do in a longer timeline. Maybe the game will not have as much for the player to do per turn as e.g. a late game in Civ2. But then there will be many more turns in the game. So it will be different. But think about it! What did the player do in Civ2, that was fun? Was it moving around little men on a city map or moving around loads of units tile per tile? I don't think so. For me it was partially watching my civ grow, and feeling the rush of a "world", in which I was in charge, and partially making strategies on where I wanted to take my civ. Did I want to become more warlike, or did I want to develop peaceful technologies? And what if I was suddenly attacked? That would require for me to rethink my priorities completely.


Elmo:

Units and movement:
Yes, propably.

Characters:
Then maybe we shouldn't have them, then.


Janes:

Yes, I agree with you in the animal issue. About the infrastructure stuff I do also, but only partially. I really don't want to build a library or a marketplace. So we have to think of a way to make things fun and realistic here. Any ideas?


Amjayee:

Technology:
Yes, but I don't think I understood the system, honestly. Something about theoretical and applied knowledge. But will there be advances? And how will I discover things?

Improvements and role of the player:
Yes, you said it much better than me here! Nice that we agree once more.


Vet:

I think you had some pretty good ideas about plant and animal domestication. Nice.

I will read and comment on your city idea tomorrow, since I haven't got the time now.

What about the rest of the doc? Do you agree with it? If not then you should write it here.


And what about the rest of you? Heardie (ok, he's on vacation, so he has an excuse), Guildmaster, Chrispie? Do you agree with this doc?

------------------
"If I sink to the bottom I can run to the shore!"
- Homer J. Simpson

GGS Website